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Latin American countries pursue alternatives to U.S.
drug war

BOGOTA, Colombia — When President Obama arrives in Colombia for a hemispheric
summit this weekend, he will hear Latin American leaders say that the
U.S.-orchestrated war on drugs, which criminalizes drug use and employs military
tactics to fight gangs, is failing and that sweeping changes need to be
considered.
Latin American leaders say they have not developed an alternative model to
the hard-line approach favored by successive American administrations since
Richard Nixon was in office. But the Colombian government says a range of
options — from decriminalizing possession of drugs to legalizing marijuana use
to regulating markets — will be debated at the Summit of the Americas in the
coastal city of Cartagena.

Faced with violence that has left 50,000 people dead in Mexico and created war zones in
Central America, regional leaders have for months been openly discussing the
shortcomings of the U.S. approach. But the summit marks the first opportunity
for many leaders to directly share their grievances with Obama.
Those who have most forcefully offered new proposals, or developed carefully
argued critiques of American policy, are among Washington’s closest allies. They
include the Colombian president, Juan Manuel Santos, a former defense minister who
marshaled U.S. aid to weaken drug syndicates; Guatemalan President Otto Perez, a former military man who
has long battled drug gangs; and Mexican President Felipe Calderon, whose nation
has been engaged in an all-out war with cartels.
“There’s probably been no person who has fought the drug cartels and drug
trafficking as I have,” Santos said in an interview last week with The
Washington Post. “But at the same time, we must be very frank: After 40 years of
pedaling and pedaling very hard, sometimes you look to your left, you look to
your right and you’re are almost in the same position.
“And so you have to ask yourself, are we doing the correct thing?”
Perez, whose small country has been engulfed by
violence that his security forces are barely able to contain, has been the
most forceful and surprising proponent of sweeping change to the current policy.
The military and police under his command in Guatemala have continued to battle
traffickers, he said in an interview from Guatemala City. But he believes they
have little to show for their effort.
“The strategy that we have followed these 30 or 40 years has practically
failed and we have to recognize it,” he said.
In Washington, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, which
oversees anti-drug policies for the Obama administration, declined to comment
about the debate. But in a two-day visit to Central America and Mexico last
month, Vice President Joe Biden laid out the government’s position, saying
“there are more problems with legalization than non-legalization.”
“It’s worth discussing,” he told reporters, “but there’s no possibility the
Obama-Biden administration will change its policy on legalization.”
U.S. data signals some progress, such as a 40 percent drop in cocaine use in
the United States since 2006 and a 68 percent plunge over the same period in the
number of people testing positive for cocaine in the workplace.
And in Colombia, where the United States has been heavily involved in
upgrading the military and in funding aerial fumigation of drug crops, the
amount of land dedicated to growing the plant used to make cocaine dropped by nearly two-thirds from 2000 to
2010. Potential production of cocaine, meanwhile, tumbled from 700 metric tons
in 2001 to 270 metric tons in 2010, though it picked up in Bolivia and Peru,
according to U.S. statistics.
Latin American leaders, though, point out that the United States remains the
world’s largest cocaine market and that there have been record levels of
violence from Venezuela to Guatemala, El Salvador to Mexico.
Cesar Gaviria, a former Colombian president who has been a forceful critic of
U.S. policy, said that American officials acknowledge the failure of the policy
behind closed doors and do little to defend it publicly. He said it is simply a
policy on automatic pilot.
“You reach the conclusion that all this killing in Mexico and Central America
has been in the name of a failed policy that the United States does not believe
in or vigorously defend,” said Gaviria, speaking in his Bogota office.
Much of the momentum for a shift began after Gaviria, former Mexican
President Ernesto Zedillo and former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso
issued a report in 2009 calling for reform of drug policies. They have been
joined by a range of intellectuals, among them the Mexican novelist Carlos
Fuentes, and retired officials, including former U.S. Secretary of State George
Shultz.
What they and many current presidents in Latin America propose is not a
wide-open policy of legalization but a softening of the current laws.
Decriminalizing drug possession would free billions of dollars from the
criminal justice system, advocates say, while vastly improving drug treatment.
Heavy drug users, who drive the illicit trade, could be weaned off drugs through
maintenance models that provide drugs legally but under heavy supervision.
Legalizing marijuana, which advocates argue presents only a modest risk to
public health, would weaken cartels and free up funding for other uses,
advocates say.
“They’re not saying, ‘Legalize everything today,’ like alcohol and tobacco,”
said Ethan Nadelmann, who has advised Latin American leaders
and is the director of the New York-based Drug Policy Alliance, an advocacy
organization that has been critical of U.S. tactics. “What they are saying is we
need to give the same consideration to alternative, regulatory and
non-prohibitionist drug control policies in the future as we’ve given to the
failed drug war strategies of the last 40 years.”
Leaders who are participating in talks on drugs at the summit said they do
not expect a policy change soon. Rather, the idea is to plant a seed that would
lead to changes in the years ahead.
“We understand perfectly that this is an election year in the United States,”
said Perez, Guatemala’s leader, noting that no major policy shift could occur
without a region-wide consensus. “There is not a decision that has to be made in
this moment, or in six months. This is a process of discussion.”
Santos, who said he wants talks to take place “without a specific proposal”
in mind, said if there are changes in the future they should be based strictly
on serious studies.
“There are good arguments for legalizing, but I would prefer to reach that
conclusion after an objective discussion,” he said. “The U.S. says, ‘We don’t
support legalization because the cost of legalization is higher than no
legalization. But I want to see a discussion where both approaches are analyzed
by experts to say, really, the cost is lower or not.”